


Changing Seasons

by zeldar



Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, s12e12 Coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 14:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldar/pseuds/zeldar
Summary: And so the hope dies and Dean is left in a desolate kitchen with the resolve that his angel will never show.***What happens after Cas’s confession in 12x12.





	Changing Seasons

The year has just begun to kiss spring—the harsh cold softened by the warmth of new life. The changing seasons offer such a contrast to their lives that Dean can’t help but to marvel at how stuck they are: because after everything, after seeing tears falling like stars from Cas’s eyes and choking on the raw grief that only comes from losing family, Cas leaves. It seems like an infinite thing, and perhaps it is, that Cas leaves when Dean needs to see him most. Even though Dean’s an old friend with big mouths at death’s door, Cas’s words have always made a habit of taking Dean apart in some irreparable way. 

Cas, Dean decides, is very predictable, because as much as spring is always dawn to summer, Castiel will never fail to be the demise of Dean Winchester. Dean aquaints his lips with a drink and tries to un-flounder his floundering thoughts, yet all he can think of is Cas’s haunting voice as he declared, ‘I love you’. Whenever Dean thinks about it, and he’s been thinking about it a lot, he feels his stomach do a roller coaster drop and that’s so pathetic that Dean has to down the rest of his whiskey with gritted teeth. Cas couldn’t have meant it, Dean rationalizes, because it’s the only way to get his heart to settle. 

And so the hope dies and Dean is left in a desolate kitchen with the resolve that his angel will never show. Dean thinks that’s the one countability of Castiel, his one true virtue. Not diligence or humility or kindness, but the immortal truth of leaving everyone behind. He left heaven, after all. He left all of his brothers and sisters, his old family, so he’ll likely leave this new one, too. Dean tries to make peace with the fact that Cas will forever abandon them, like the inevitability of leaves drifting away in the fall. Dean tells himself it’s an unchanging, unmoving fact set in stone.

“Hello, Dean.” Cas then has the audacity to say from where he’s just arrived in the doorway behind Dean. 

Dean, his newfound verdicts withering like parched grass, spins to face Cas, who has presumably let himself into the bunker. Dean can’t even conjure up relief, in fact, he’s kind of pissed off. Cas could’ve saved him a helluva lot of trouble by getting here earlier. He doesn’t even address the angel through his outrage and disappointment, deciding that he no longer has anything to say to Cas and vowing to answer only in yes, no, and grunts. He will, under no circumstance, bring up the events of tonight; of the angel’s heartbreaking words. It was, after all, a mistake. No need to unnecessarily complicate it. 

Castiel looks unsure of himself in Dean’s silence, and so he speaks, “I didn’t know if you were still awake. I just wanted to-”’

"You told me that you loved me.” Dean blurts out, his tongue loose with whiskey, and he immediately curses himself for his awkwardness. 

It was true, anyways. Cas’s confession was for Dean, and everybody knew it. Especially Sam, who’s mouth mirrored a door on a busy day with the amount of times he opened and closed it during the resulting car ride, each time looking like he had something uncomfortable to say and each time being met with a half-glare from Dean, effectively silencing him. Dean’s mesmerized by his whiskey glass, slowly lamenting condensation against the hardwood table and giving him something to think about other than the fact that he and Castiel are talking about feelings. 

“I did.” States Cas like the unhelpful, frustrating thing he is. 

Dean pauses, and thinks. He wishes he were better at thinking, at talking things out. He wishes a lot of things. His next line is quieter, like he doesn’t want to unearth the truth that maybe, just maybe Castiel loves him. Why else would the angel be standing in the kitchen before him?

"Did you mean it?”

Castiel matches his tone so that his voice is as soft as his swimming eyes, “Yes.”

Dean almost startles. There was no stealing the word away from where it hung in the air and with this comes another truth- is wasn't brotherly love. Castiel was confessing something: he had a tentative, abashed look on his face and tension grasping his body like he was a minuteman fighting on moment’s notice, but Castiel already knew his place in the Winchester family. No, this was something more than brotherly love.

And then with this realization Dean is shoving the information away far, far away and putting up his protective walls once more because Dean cannot even dare to dream of what he so desperately wants between them. He concludes that Castiel must be mistaken, for only in poppy-dreams and liquored trips has he thought over relationship in such a way that it would appear to Dean, in his altered state of mind, that Castiel was very much attracted to him in that way. A terminal, awe-filled glance is thrown towards Castiel and then anger pulls Dean up out of the churning, dark waters of the unknown.

"That was a dick move, Cas.” Dean says, like a dick, but he needs a subject change enough that the angel’s feelings can’t be spared. "What if you had died? That would’ve killed me and Sammy.”

Castiel answers harshly, and Dean can tell his feelings are in play, now, "That was never my intention, Dean.”

Dean wants to grin, because Dean has discovered that this Castiel—the Castiel that has emerged after a tiring and patience-wearing existence on Earth—is fun. Gone is the even-tempered, unconditional angel that answered with infuriatingly sound logic; this Castiel rises to an argument because he is simply too human to lie passive. In this way Dean knows that Castiel’s time on earth must have spanned greater than the millennia before it. Dean has loved every minute of discovering Castiel’s new anger and he relishes in its reliability, because right now Dean could use a fight. What better way to hide what he feels?

Dean stands, his fist itching to curl, "What were you even thinking? That you’d just- what? Love and leave a guy?”

Never did Dean intent to bring this conversation out of the plural of Sam and Mary, but his mouth is talking faster than his brain because he’s so desperate to get away from everything. He doesn’t even mean what he’s saying, really, but he lashes out, feral and wild and hurting everything without thought.

"Don’t be a hypocrite, Dean. What about sacrificing yourself every chance you get, without bothering to care about who you leave behind?” Castiel growls.

Dean gets a thrill when Castiel says his name in that bitter voice and from how bright and icy his blue eyes get, and it pains him that he’s in love with the whole damn thing. It reminds him so much of when Castiel, angel of the lord, appeared before him on that first day like an untamed, dazzling monster that could destroy anything in it’s path. Castiel was something else, something mysterious and incomprehensible. Even when Castiel was human, he was always something else.

“You aren’t allowed to do that to us, to me! You’ve screwed us over so many times, Cas. You’ve hurt us by throwing yourself away, by coming into our family then leaving! You’re supposed to be my best friend!” Dean is yelling now, he’s so caught up in the moment, and he wishes that Castiel would just hit him or smite him or anything, really, instead of staring at him in way that Dean can’t help but to think, He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.

But, evidently Dean’s anger is too much, for Castiel’s icy blue eyes melt and, for the second time that day, tears drop like rain falling after snow. Castiel musters the remnants of his broken anger and speaks, “It was my last chance. It was my last chance to tell you.”

There is a heavy silence in the room and with this Dean knows that everything has changed. The sight of Cas, tear-eyed through his anger makes Dean unbearably tired of them beating eachother up. Instead, he becomes so mesmerized by how the  
reflective, sparkling tears look gorgeous on Cas’s face that Cas is absolved of whatever piss-poor disagreement Dean just conjured up and Dean’s anger dribbles out to join Cas’s tears somewhere on the floor.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-“ Dean whispers.

Dean's expression softens and, despite all of his instincts, Dean reaches up to catch one one shining droplet from Cas’s face. Cas looks up to Dean's eyes and his face immediately relaxes into a sad type of relief because he knows he's forgiven.

And then, all that's hanging between them is the fact that Cas admitted his love. This comes raining down on Dean, who doesn't know how to respond without making an ass of himself. But in that moment, Dean gathers the little bits of faith he keeps securely tucked away and decides to just let himself feel. He throws in the towel, accepts the crumbling of his walls, and then there’s an amazing moment where he thinks, Cas loves me. And, I think love him. Of course we love each other, it’s been pretty damn obvious. And it has, for every laugh and smile and fight and death has proven time and time again that they care so deeply for each other.

Dean struggles for the words to convey just how extraordinary everything while Cas suppresses an amused look towards Dean- who is starting down at the teardrop on his fingertip with something akin to awe.

"Cas, you’re incredible.”

Somehow, in Cas’s fantastic way, he understands. And then he just beams at Dean, and for the first time Dean thinks that maybe he just might be good enough. Because Dean isn’t good at love, and that’s what this is- this free-falling, dizzying thing he feels for Cas, has always felt for Cas, but Dean is who Cas picked and Dean doesn’t want to go on anymore without having this one selfish thing. He will allow himself the happiness he doesn’t think he deserves. He has no right to love the angel, but he does, and so he will let this godly creature close to his ruined soul and pray to the universe that he is forgiven for the crime of allowing an angel to love such a broken thing.

And the universe, by some miracle, just sighs and moves on, because the angel has always belonged to Dean Winchester in some indescribable way, and there is nothing to be helped as Castiel leans in and kisses Dean.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed, please leave a comment telling me what you liked!


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